Summer After the Chamber
by anaknisatanas
Summary: a oneshot Ginny POV


AN: I've never written a fanfic that focuses on Ginny before. In fact I don't think that she's played a major part in anything I've written. And while I do read fanfic with her in them and even like her, I don't really have any strong feelings about her as a character. The _italicized_ lines are a poem that I wrote. The italicized _he_'s and _him_'s refer to Tom Riddle a.k.a. Voldemort. Enjoy.

She had lived here all her life. Before Hogwarts, before _him_.

No one had come out directly to ask her about the events of First Year. They watched her for a time to make sure that she seemed stable, held whispered conversations across the room and thought she could not hear them. She did not bother to correct those assumptions.

Being back at the Burrow was stifling. She could not remember why she had thought it would be comforting to be surrounded by the familiar walls and scents of her mother's cooking. Now it was a cage.

She was different. _He_ had changed her, warped her, broken her and made her stronger. Oh, she knew very well if Harry had not saved her she would be dead, but in some way she was grateful to the experience _he_ had given her.

She liked night the best at the Burrow. It meant that everyone was asleep and she could do as she liked without having to be careful around the watchful eyes of her family. She could go for walks around the property and talk to herself quietly under the stars about the things she secretly wanted. Some of the things she wanted were not good things or things a girl her age should be aware of.

Eventually it seemed her family believed she was relatively unharmed. The few brief references to what _he_ had done to her were easily put to rest when she claimed to not really remember all the times _he_ had made her do things. All of them thought it had not really affected her deeply enough to change her from the sweet little girl they had watched grow up. They were wrong.

_Creeping past locked doors_

_She doesn't live here anymore._

Colin Creevey was the only one of her year mates who was not afraid to talk to her, mostly because he had wanted to hear all about how Harry had saved her. She gave the expected gushing review of how brave Harry had been, even though she did not really remember just what had happened down in the Chamber of Secrets. From that point she had made a friend over the shared love of all things Harry Potter that the two held.

Colin had been kind enough to send her all the photographs he had taken up until he had been petrified and the ones he had taken from when he had been woken. Now she had a large photo album of the people and places at Hogwarts with particular emphasis on Harry, not that she minded. There were also many pictures of her from the end of the year. She had also had her mother make copies of many of the photographs from her childhood and those of her siblings.

She liked to flip through the two photo albums. In the first she would remember about the weak and overly sweet little girl she had been. The second reminded her of the cunning and flexible person she had become. _He_ had taught her many useful things over the course of one year.

She knew it was better to observe before rushing into a situation, but she also knew that keeping an image was important above all else. Being in Gryffindor and being a Weasley meant acting brash on occasion. It was easier to go back to acting like her old self if she looked at the differences between the two photo albums. Everything that she had once been was changed, she was a new person now but no one knew that. No one knew her.

No one knew that in many ways she could admire _him, _how _he _had drawn her in and used her. No one knew that she hated how _he_ had used her and hated how stupid and naïve she had been to believe _him. _ Sometimes thinking about _him_ made her want to touch herself in the way _he_ had directed her while she had been killing the roosters. Sometimes thinking about _him_ made her want to vomit.

_Lost secrets hidden away_

_She hides the past in photographs._

Sometimes she liked to pretend nothing was different and nothing had happened. She could only do that when she was alone though, or when things were quiet. She still held affection for her family, still loved them even but it was like she was a stranger amongst them. She knew better than to voice how she felt too, they would try and get her help and she did not want that. What she wanted was to be able to stretch her wings.

Her family was planning a trip to visit Charlie in Romania. She knew that Charlie and Bill saw the changes in her better than the rest, but they also knew that if she really felt she needed help she would ask for it.

_He_ had taught her many things. There was only power. She believed that. Power came from sheer force of the magic you possessed and what you knew and could do. She knew she held a decent amount of magical strength but she would need more than that if she wanted to be something. She planned to watch and learn about the people around her, especially those who were caught in Harry's vortex, she would decide when to act.

She wanted Harry, sometimes. Other times he reminded her too much of _him_ in the way he looked and his unconscious mannerisms. And sometimes she wanted to strike out at those closest to her and make them feel pain for not noticing that there was anything wrong with her. Usually though she did not dwell on those thoughts for long because overall she preferred herself the way she was now.

Maybe, though, she was simply crazy. If she was no one had to know.

_There are none left who know_

_She isn't the same girl anymore._


End file.
